A Different Perspective

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Many people say that the election of President Barack Obama in 2008 marked the beginning of a post-racial society. However, even after President Obama was re-elected a number of African-Americans and Latinos have noticed an ever increasing trend of bias, discrimination and other social prejudices across the board in business, education, housing and more. Reversing this trend requires an in-depth understanding of the thought processes which may trigger stereotyping and lead to discrimination in organizational and other settings in the first place.

The following excerpt is posted with the permission of Columbia Ideas at Work, a publication of Columbia Business School. The full article appeared in the Columbia Ideas at Work, a publication of Columbia Business School, Winter 2013 Edition and was originally posted online July 30, 2012.No Time for Discrimination By: ProfessorModupe Akinola

“Discrimination against minorities and women — whether in housing, education, or employment — is a complex, long-standing phenomenon with origins that are not clear-cut. For organizational psychologists like Professor Modupe Akinola, understanding the conditions under which discrimination is more likely to occur is an important research priority, and one that can help individuals and firms curb the incidence of bias.

Inspired by the work of Yaacov Trope and Nira Liberman, Akinola, with Katherine Milkman of Wharton and Dolly Chugh of NYU, investigated how temporal distance affects the tendency to discriminate. Trope and Lieberman have shown that decision makers faced with choices in the immediate future focus on the practical details and feasibility of the choice, quickly assessing how, when, and whether something can be done. In contrast, distant future events trigger a more abstract thought process — decision makers think less about the practical aspects of a decision and instead focus on why they might chose a particular course of action.

The researchers hypothesized that more abstract — and subjective and judgmental — thought processes might trigger stereotyping and lead to discrimination in organizational settings. They predicted that when decision makers faced a choice about a distant future event, such as meeting with an individual in one week, the choice would trigger an abstract mode of thinking causing professors to question why the meeting should occur rather than whether the meeting should occur. Thus, a meeting request from a woman or person of color might evoke stereotypes.” Read More.

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